Former Gov. Haley Barbour continues to catch flak for using the term “tar babies” to describe President Obama’s policies in a conference call with his lobbying firm’s clients after last week’s elections.

But the chairman of the state’s Legislative Black Caucus has come to his defense, saying he believes Barbour’s comments were “simply partisan rhetoric,” and not racism.

“The truth of the matter is that any public policy considered controversial is a political tar baby,” state Sen. Kenny Wayne Jones, chairman of the Black Caucus, said in a statement. “Religious freedom, for example, is a political tar baby for Mississippi because when you touch it you get stuck, and the more you struggle with it, the more entangled you get.

“Therefore, I do not condemn Gov. Barbour’s statements as racist, nor do I believe he intended for anyone else to view his comments as such,” Jones said.

[…] Republican Governor of Maine, Paul LePage said out-of-state drug dealers from NYC and Connecticut awere knocking up “young white” girls and causing problems in his state according to Black America Web reports: […]